Category: CLIENT SUCCESS

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International connected technology company improves their financial system and close process

Akili identified a list of 38 improvement opportunities, in addition to a corresponding time savings of 15 eight hour work days.

Client Profile

Location: South Jordan, UT
Industry: Technology
Products and Services: Connected Technology
Solution: Business Process Management
Technology Partner: Akili

Situation and Challenges

  • While the client is completing their monthly financial close in 5 days, the financial team must work an excessive number of hours to accomplish that goal.
  • This persistent work stress is causing a high and undesirable rate of staff turnover.
  • The client is looking for process changes to drive:
    • Efficiency and better utilization of SAP as compared to offline spreadsheet activities.
    • Best practices to leverage more activities during the month and provide a more focused month-end close.
    • Quick wins and short to mid-term solutions without having to re-architect the entire financial system.
    • Better reporting/analysis with SAP ERP, BW and/or BPC.

Project Objective

  • Document current state processes, related systems, and roles around Financial Close.
  • Identify the root cause of performance constraints/issues/gaps; identify opportunities for improvement and concurrently implement Quick Wins.
  • Develop a Roadmap to implement changes.

Project Highlights

  • Process mapping workshops were conducted with Accounting employees. The level of participation by key Accounting leadership and Accounting SMEs was excellent.
  • Quickly identified crucial pain points and corresponding SAP, BPC, Process “quick fixes” to lagging performance. Communication gaps between key entities became apparent.
  • Identified and documented numerous manually intensive process steps, including the use of a multitude of spreadsheets, causing performance/cycle time pressures and delays around the close process.

Assessment Benefits

  • Created 39 As-Is Process Models in MS Visio (2013) in 7 business days which provided a framework to identify inefficiencies, gaps, and opportunities; and to improve internal communications.
  • Identified 38 improvement opportunities with a corresponding time savings of 15 eight-hour work days per month.
  • Created a prioritized Opportunity Roadmap of change initiatives to address the efficiency gaps.
  • The team is actively implementing these changes to drive sustained improvement in the Financial Close process.

Why Akili

  • History of Program Management and technology implementation experience with fortune 500 enterprise strategy.
  • Proven ability to deliver initiatives.
  • Strong Business Process Design and Organizational Change Management Skills.
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Gold mining company works with Akili to reduce their monthly close time frame

Gold mining company Consolidates for IFRS reporting on SAP BPC 10 Microsoft, Integrates with SAP Business One for Microsoft

Location: Denver, CO; Ankara, Turkey; Perth, Australia
Industry: Gold mining
Products and Services: Gold
Revenue: $720M
Employees: 1000+
Solution: SAP BPC
Implementation Partner: Akili

Situation and Challenges

  • Initial BPC implementation had 3 source systems and 7 chart-of-accounts that client desired to consolidate.
  • Client’s users are located worldwide in the United States, Turkey, and Australia.

Project Objective

  • Shortening their financial close (consolidations) time frame.
  • Re-distributing the work load for data collection to reduce the burden on the centralized financial team.
  • Improve financial accuracy for complex accounting application (i.e., foreign currency, non-controlling and proportionate method subsidiaries).

Solution Benefits

  • Client’s centralized finance team focused their time on evaluation and consolidation activities rather than data aggregation.
  • Business units could measure their performance based on a standardized set of metrics.
  • The ability to create “what-if” scenarios relating to potential acquisitions provides guidance in client’s M&A strategy.

Why Akili

  • Client’s team members had previous implementation experience with Akili’s team.
  • Client was looking to streamline the close and reporting process at an affordable price.
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Accelerate Your New Asset Assimilation

Learn from SM Energy’s experience, working with Akili, to accelerate their process for asset assimilation

Upstream Oil & Gas companies strategically look to acquire assets as a method for growth and market penetration. The integration of those new assets into their SAP environment is critical to gain the most value from the acquisition.  Frequently the data conversion to an SAP system is considered a trivial task and is given inadequate attention in the overall integration timeline.  A proper data conversion strategy is key to the success of supporting these assets within SAP.  While working with SM Energy during their SAP ERP implementation, Akili developed a rapid deployment data migration solution to accelerate the conversion of critical data to support an acquisition.

View the presentation below for insight into leveraging the following with your next new asset assimilation:

  • A SAP Rapid Deployment Solution (RDS) that can be quickly deployed in your environment using standard SAP tools (Data Services)
  • Over 70 pre-built data load objects
  • A pre-defined data load process with key tasks and dependencies to optimize the data load time
  • Pre-developed error reporting to assist with data quality issue identification
  • Tools to support auditing of the conversion process

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Solar Energy company uses Anaplan for Financial Consolidations

Solar Energy company uses Anaplan for Financial Consolidations, reducing month-end and quarter-end consolidations processes from 10 days to 5 days.

Client Profile

Location: San Francisco, CA
Industry: Energy Renewables & Environment
Products and Services: Solar Energy, Solar Service, Clean energy
Revenue: $305 Million
Employees: 1001-5000
Solution: Anaplan
Implementation Partner: Akili

Situation and Challenges

  • Client needed a fully functioning consolidations model to replace its previous excel solution.
  • The previous consolidations process was manually intensive and difficult to scale.
  • Intricate income statement mapping caused complex reporting challenges.

Project Objective

  • Create a consolidations model that would allow for a more efficient month-end process and provide dynamic visibility for senior management.

Implementation Highlights

  • Akili worked closely with the client’s accounting team to ensure a complete understanding of its financial consolidations process.
  • Daily touch points with the client’s subject matter experts allowed for transparency and understanding of the model design.
  • Client had all (100%) of the data extracts from source systems prior to the start of the project.
  • Aggressive five-week project timeline was completed on time, including client training.

Solution Benefits

  • All consolidation journal entries were moved to Anaplan online for complete visibility across the organization rather than having them staggered throughout multiple excel files.
  • The month-end and quarter-end consolidations processes were reduced from 10 days to 5 days.

Why Akili/Anaplan

  • Akili has extensive experience implementing consolidations solutions across multiple industries.
  • Akili was chosen because of its strong track record with Anaplan implementations at scale
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How Anaplan Simplified the Monthly Capital Spend Forecasting Process at Tribune Media

Akili customer Tribune Media shares their Financial Planning and Analysis success story

With Anaplan for Finance you can plan, forecast, consolidate, analyze, and report – at scale and across your entire enterprise, with less effort, and more accuracy. Anaplan takes you beyond basic budgeting—linking advanced drivers and models to operational and financial plans across Finance, Sales, Operations, and HR.

Finance Anaplan

Learn more about how Anaplan can help you build financial plans and orchestrate performance with speed, precision, and true collaboration.

View the Slideshare below to see how Tribune Media used Anaplan to simplify their capital spending monthly forecasting process.

To find out more about how Akili can help you realize the benefits of the Anaplan platform, please contact us at info@akili.com